The Universe Next Door
by Random-Battlecry
Summary: She told them about one dream, and regretted it ever since. There was no way to explain that it wasn’t the goodbye she needed. She gave him credit for trying. PostDoomsday.


Title: The Universe Next Door (1/1)  
Author: Random Battlecry  
Rating: G  
Pairing: Rose/10  
Spoilers: Doomsday  
Feedback: Yes please.  
A/N: I actually had a dream sort of like this last night, which was weird.

She told them about one dream, and regretted it ever since. There was no way to explain that it wasn't the goodbye she needed.

She gave him credit for trying, and consoled herself with the thought that it might have been more if he was real, if he'd been there, if she could have touched him. There'd been a spark in his eyes, nearly drowned by unshed tears, that said he would have let her, for once, and more than that— perhaps would have— 

She didn't tell them about the other dreams, and sometimes she wondered just how honest the Doctor was about crossing to parallel worlds. He was there in her dreams, every night without fail, and even when not playing a large part he would still be standing in the doorway, arms crossed, eyebrows lifted and that perpetual gleeful smile playing about his lips. In the shadowed hall of her mind, she fought angels and danced with demons, cried and laughed and loved and was nothing new, nothing different, never anything else but herself. Always aware of his eyes, darting about the room, taking it all in and comparing the laxness with the life they'd known. It was real because it was new. None of this ever happened, so how could she be remembering it?

She ignored him for as long as she could. They'd said goodbye, hadn't they; and he wasn't really there, was he; he was off on some grand adventure even as she played out what might have been in her head. Rather pathetic, really. If she could dare to meet his eyes, she'd undoubtedly read pity in the depths.

She didn't dare.

He seemed content to be on the sidelines, which was another count against his reality— certainly the true Doctor would never do that. No, he'd be in the thick of things, he'd be orchestrating and arranging, accompanying and leading and lifting and felling and living a billion more years without her.

Jack, or a ghost of the memory of someone who looked vaguely like Jack, appeared in her mind one night, and she cried hard as his hands closed around her wrists and his lips found her neck. He was simultaneously _just there_ against her and still across the room, eyes narrowed in amusement at what he could or would or shouldn't do, but was about to, because he was Jack and since when did he pay attention to coulds, woulds, or shouldn'ts? She arched her back to fit her hips to his, burrowed her head into his neck, tipping it to one side so there was more skin for him to find, and took a peculiar pleasure in a dizzying, tickling sensation of irrational idiocy, because she was loving on an illusion to inspire jealousy in another illusion, and because she knew that if she opened her eyes and glanced over at the man in the doorway, he'd be laughing his head off. Laughing at her and what she was doing, or trying to do, and so she kissed Jack rather savagely on the collarbone and firmly put him away. She walked towards the doorway with her eyes closed, ready to be angry, and was extremely taken aback to find it closer than she realized; she bumped into him and looked up and there he was, looking straight down at her and not laughing at all.

"What are you doing here?" she managed, and the anger slipped and slid around her words, half off like bedsheets in the morning, until what was mostly revealed was a terrible need and a dreadful sadness.

"Universe next door was full," he said.

"Donâ't joke like that."

He shrugged lightly.

"What makes you think I'm here?"

"You've been here, you— " She turned her head and bit the words off abruptly. When she started again it was more careful, more deliberate. "You're here every night, just watching."

It startled her even more when he leaned forward abruptly, hands in his pockets, and grinned into her face. "Not every night. Not just watching."

And yeah, there was that one time— or more than one— a few times, then, that it had been more than watching; but she had put that firmly out of her mind in order to speak to him without blushing. And here he was dragging it up, dragging it out, fully cognizant and not nearly as embarrassed about it as she was.

"I," she said, with no clear idea of where that sentence was going. "I'm."

He watched her, dipping his head to look up at her from under raised eyebrows.

"Sorry I shagged you in my sleep?" he prompted.

"I didn't!" she exclaimed.

He shrugged again, made doubtful noises with his mouth. "That's a point of contention, there. We could haggle over that for hours. What constitutes shagging? And what constitutes sleep? I believe you tend to drift off in the middle of the day, and while you're obviously not fully aware of what's going on, neither are you fully asleep, and yet somehow I always end up— "

"How would you know I'm not fully asleep?" she demanded.

"You're not snoring," he said promptly.

"How— how would you know any of this?" She narrowed her eyes at him. "How are you here, and why? And— will you please leave?"

"Do you want me t' he asked, quietly this time, almost subservient. It unnerved her. It also condemned her, because for the life of her sheâ€™d never been able to lie in her dreams, even as she was a terrible liar when she was awake, and she couldn't bring herself to say yes and she couldn't say no.

She was merely broken, for another few seconds, standing there staring in impossible eyes.

"What are you doing here?" she said. "I've said goodbye. Why do you keep coming back when—"

It was the touch of guilt and shame in his eyes that made her finally understand.

"I don't believe it," she said. "You said there was no way, that you—"

"Absolutely not," he rushed to agree. "There is no way. There never has been a way, never will be a way. I'm all in your head. This is impossible. This is absolutely, in all ways, utterly, impossibly impossible."

And she smiled, then, and shoved the last few remnants of anger away. "I dunno. I like impossible."

And he looked nervous. He looked more nervous still when she brushed her fingers carefully down one thin cheek, down to the clean line of his jaw and along it to his chin, her thumb passing faintly over his lips. She leaned forward till he could feel her breath there.

"I want you out of my head," she said, in almost silence, "for good. Please."

He grinned then, eyes lighting up, and with her hand away from his mouth he kissed her, short, jumpy kisses, so brief that she couldn't get the taste of him and had to take a conglomeration of Doctor, had to add warmth to warmth to see if there was any, had to practically take a survey of kisses to catch the means, median, and mode of where most of them landed. They weren't all on her lips. He wouldn't touch her with his hands but she was angled perfectly anyway and her skin was covered in alien tinges.

"Oh, I missed you," he said, in between kisses. "I miss you still. Rose Tyler. I don't cry, you understand, and I cried. Howled. Bawled. Broke down completely, and it's the tears that lead me back to you. We're marked, the two of us. I never cry." He caught rather desperately at her lips this time and held on there, drawing her open and pulling her closer and going deep till she felt full up of Doctor and not herself at all. This was not normal. She'd kissed him once or twice with no co operation at all, and she had to shake herself out of anger at the fact that it took a separation of universes to bring this out of him.

"Are you a ghost?" she questioned on his lips.

"I'm the Doctor," he said. "And I am not really here."

She woke the next morning with a full sense of the certainty of loss, grief, denial, and eventual recovery. He'd promised to get out of her head. He'd stick to it, she was sure, and when she daydreamed that afternoon, dawdling at work and tapping idly at the keyboard, she allowed herself to mentally shag him without feeling in the least like she was being voyeured at.

Everyone needed standards to try and attain. She never did explain to anyone where she went when she was dreaming, and the most her mother ever said was that she looked like she was on some other planet. Which was, for all intents and purposes, true.

The ghost of the memory of someone who looks exactly like the Doctor is joined by someone who looks exactly like the Doctor as well, and the fact that the two don't look anything alike is merely resultant of the fact that they both look like the Doctor. She managed to keep her smile down to a minimum when they're there in her head and she's around others, but when she's alone, brilliance shines through.

She couldn't keep true track of all the years she was with him, so she just counts it as forever.


End file.
